


The Pact

by drea_rev



Category: Bayonetta (Video Games)
Genre: Backstory, Demonic Themes, Friendship, Gen, Pre-Canon, also punching, because tbh the demonic stuff in this game still creeps me out even though i love it, but not too violent, pact, school days, so i kept it lightweight, witch academy, young bayonetta, young jeanne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 05:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13968477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drea_rev/pseuds/drea_rev
Summary: --"What are you waiting for?!"Jeanne plants a hand on Cereza's back and doesn't just shove, but about throws the other girl through the now-unlocked gate. Cereza trips and falls on her hands and knees on the pitch black grass and her glasses land with a plunk somewhere in front of her. The rain's already made everything wet. She can't see."Get up!" Cereza just manages to grab something thin and glasses-shaped from the ground before that same arm is snatched and roughly pulled up, and she can't put her glasses back on because Jeanne's running off in front, as she does, dragging what the other witches sometimes call her 'pet' behind her.It's a blur of blackness, occasional flashes of light, and lit-up shapes of clouds beneath what Cereza can surmise is the full moon, but she sees two of them. Her ears tell her there's thunder to accompany the light show, though; it's like the biggest fist you could imagine is trying to crush an even bigger rock, and pieces are falling off and tumbling down a hill.They aren't supposed to be in here.





	The Pact

**Author's Note:**

> what is sleep anymore

It's hard to figure out where they went wrong. Maybe it'd been day one, when Jeanne--although Cereza hadn't known her name then, or even her status--had idly glanced over to the six-year-old girl playing alone outside the academy's fenced-in practice pitch and their eyes met. Cereza had instantly looked away, afraid that the entire crowd of witches Jeanne was standing with would follow her example and then a lot of attention would be on her.

And that was _never_ a good thing.

So Cereza ran across the clearing, and into the woods, where the leaves had just started to chip and float down from the maples and oaks, and her favorite little stream that branched off from the Sullen River warbled by. She found her spot, where not too many little rocks made it comfortable, and she had a big oak tree to lean against. And she daydreamed, as lonely people do, so when noisy footfalls interrupted her reverie and they were clearly coming closer, she jumped, and turned to see a girl walk out from behind a scarred-looking birch that nearly had its lowest branches submerged.

And maybe it would have been fine if that girl had said anything other than--

\--" _What are you waiting for?!_ "

Jeanne plants a hand on Cereza's back and doesn't just shove, but about _throws_ the other girl through the now-unlocked gate. Cereza trips and falls on her hands and knees on the pitch black grass and her glasses land with a plunk somewhere in front of her. The rain's already made everything wet. She can't see.

"Get up!" Cereza just manages to grab something thin and glasses-shaped from the ground before that same arm is snatched and roughly pulled up, and she can't put her glasses back on because Jeanne's running off in front, as she does, dragging what the other witches sometimes call her 'pet' behind her.

It's a blur of blackness, occasional flashes of light, and lit-up shapes of clouds beneath what Cereza can surmise is the full moon, but she sees two of them. Her ears tell her there's thunder to accompany the light show, though; it's like the biggest fist you could imagine is trying to crush an even bigger rock, and pieces are falling off and tumbling down a hill.

They aren't supposed to be in here.

 

_B_

 

"I'm...I'm not s'posed to train w-with the witches, that's why," Cereza had said, that day by the stream, being stared down. "I wasn't...I wasn't trying to sneak in, I promise, you can ask my mummy, she knows I'm a good girl--I was j-just curious about what you lot were doing," she pushed her glasses up on her nose.

"' _Mummy_ '? How _old_ are you?" The girl took several slightly intimidating steps closer.

"S-six--"

" _Six_? That's just about grown, don't you know that? You still call your mum 'mummy'? Where are you from?"

Cereza had never, ever known what to say to that question. "I'm...I'm from my house."

The girl threw back her head and laughed. Oh, Jesus, now Cereza knew she was in for it. Laughter was a bad, bad sign. "We're all from our houses! You don't even know _anything_ , do you?"

Cereza felt wretched.

The girl leaned down to look at her, like an owl might look at prey that it's not sure is still alive or not. "Well? What else do you say? What's your name?"

"C-Cereza."

"Well, _Cereza_ ," The girl said as she pushed her hard in the shoulders, and Cereza went into instinct mode, shifting her momentum to the side instead of falling back, and as a result rolling a few feet. When she pushed herself up with her arms and legs, she was standing in the stream.

"-- _clearly_ you aren't as weak or sissy as you _look_."

When the girl didn't pursue her further, didn't try to dunk her in the stream, didn't call her 'impure born' or 'impure blood' and utter a purifying incantation after looking at her, Cereza just stared at her, ankle-deep.

"And you might as well stick with me then. I'm Jeanne, and you'll never find another witch like me."

And then she'd snapped her fingers, and her body enfolded itself into something very small instantly, a wildcat--a lynx, fur all scarlet, a color like no real lynx would be. And it paced forward languidly, its paws breaking the surface. And now Cereza backed away, because she knew she was about to say something that would make this girl angry.

"I--I saw you lot practicing that. Looks like fun."

Instantly, the lynx morphed back into a tall girl her age, an angry one. "Fun? Fun?! These are _fighting_ techniques, not fun!"

"W-well I think it would be a bit of fun to be a cat," Cereza said.

"Do you? You _would_ , you really don't know anything about this, do you. Has your 'mummy' told you about it? She's a witch, en't she?"

Cereza said, slowly, hesitatingly, "She doesn't talk much."

"Not even about _beastmorphing_? How are you going to learn to fight? We might be attacked one day, you know."

Cereza said, "My mummy will protect me. She's so strong."

"Oh you're a scream. A riot. A regular _comedienne_. It's really comical, you know, the fact that you don't."

No, in retrospect, it hadn't been then.

_B_

Cereza's feet were falling down wide stone step after wide stone step, and now she couldn't see anything at all; they must not even be passing windows, and the torches must have been all put out. She was almost out of breath. The rain was lashing the building to the last roof shingle, she could hear it, and that it had strengthened, but it was muffled by the multiple floors of stone they must be under.

"Jeanne! I need my glasses, for God's sake!"

They stopped, and Cereza almost fell when Jeanne let her go without warning, but now she could jam the soaked and muddy frames on her face and look around. The first thing she saw was her fifteen-year old companion, and the second was the large, strong metal door she was trying to break into.

Doors and furniture at the academy, as a rule, were made of wood, because the Umbra witches were surrounded by a fine amount of it when they started the academy and the clan hundreds of years ago and had found it suitable for their purposes. This had been until they discovered the joys of having the building flood. The entire academy practically reeked of old, wet wood on nights like this as a result.

But this metal door, the one Jeanne was muttering swears under her breath at, calling it all sorts of bitches and whores and telling it to do unspeakable things while struggling with a lock Cereza had seen nowhere else in the academy, or even anywhere in town, it was free of even a speck of rust.

"We have to do this tonight," Jeanne said, finally turning her attention to the other girl for a second to send her a quick angry glare, "This is important. It's a pact."

Cereza had _already_ signed a pact. It was with Jeanne. She'd signed it at ten, and Jeanne had done some sort of witchery to stick it to the ceiling above Cereza's bed so she could regret it every night before she went to sleep. That, in fact, might have been when they really went wrong.

_B_

"Look, no, _not like that_. Oh _god_ \--why can't you just come to class? You're an _awful_ dancer, and I need to get my hair cut, and they close at six in the afternoon! Do it _right_ this time!"

Cereza was about to perform the movements Jeanne had shown her again, but something made her stop, curl her hands into fists, and drop those fists to her sides, and give the master of angry stares and wrathful vernacular the most vile and wolfish glare she could.

And Jeanne stepped back in shock.

Cereza knew she should be grateful. She honestly didn't know how Jeanne did it sometimes. She would go to lessons and study, and then show Cereza everything she'd learned that day, and then they'd practice sparring. She was effectively teaching Cereza everything she'd have learned if she was allowed to attend the academy herself. It was twice the work for a reward Cereza still didn't understand; not even that, but Jeanne seemed to be extremely popular, and there were a lot of people she could devote this time to instead.

But here she was, in Cereza's frigid little attic room in the dorm, an exile-but-not-an-exile if you ever saw one, showing her how to do summoning spells.

"Cereza?"

Cereza wouldn't remember what came over her, other than a severe loss of the ability to understand consequences, because she took a running start and threw a haymaker right into Jeanne's perfect little jaw. And she knew she had hit within two inches of her mark, and she felt a strange feeling in that, before extremely strong hands grabbed her pajama lapels and grappled her into the carpet.

"You--little--!" Jeanne's face was red, and she was sitting on Cereza's back, and Cereza, from where her face was being smushed into years-ago-dusted fibers, could still see a burst and bloody cheek with a bruise forming. The odd feeling made Cereza do something very strange.

She smiled.

Jeanne scowled and patted her face to get to what Cereza was looking at.

"Oh-OH! I'm bleeding! You--I'm just-- _I'm just trying to help!_ "

She took some of her weight off Cereza's back, so the girl rolled nimbly on the carpet, leapt to her feet, and shoved Jeanne with all her might so that the pushy little tomboy could only stumble out the door.

"C-Cereza! Don't--"

Cereza was just in time to slam it and lock it behind her. She could see a narrow, bright line of the other girl through the gap between wall and door. Jeanne was livid.

"You're--you don't know who you're _dealing with_ , Cereza! You've _really_ done it now!"

Cereza backed away from the door, fear filling her stomach as it dawned on her. She had punched the Umbra heir. Jeanne wasn't just talking; she could have the Umbra, who hated Cereza already, take this entire room away from her.

And she'd have no place to go.

Jeanne's loud epithets were drawing the other witches who lived in the dormitory up the stairs, and Cereza ran to her bed and pulled her pillow over her ears. She fell asleep without remembering to brush her teeth.

The next morning, the window's sunlight made the tiny, bare room a cheerful and warm place, and then Cereza remembered what had happened the night before, and started crying. She cried for two hours, rolling in bed from one side to another, completely undone.

She didn't have anyone other than Jeanne, when it really came down to it. What--was she really ready to throw it all away because Jeanne thought her dancing was bad? And actually, the hurt hadn't even come from her words. It had come from the fact that Cereza was constantly comparing her and Jeanne's figures, their vastly different levels of gracefulness, and never saying anything about it, and then the last straw had been Jeanne, as was her way, making it very clear not only what she thought, but probably the rest of the universe would think, too.

She didn't need Cereza, Cereza needed her.

Cereza resolved to run away. She knew the forest very well and could bring a couple things; her Cheshire, her locket from her mother, and a couple of biscuits that she had saved and not eaten yet. Starving to death in the woods by choice was a way better way to die than whatever the Umbra would call her before casting her out, even though they'd never welcomed her to begin with.

In fact, they were probably all discussing how best to insult her at the exiling ceremony now.

Cereza didn't have a bag or basket, so she grabbed her cat, the locket, and the biscuits and put them on top of her scarf before tying it up. She took a deep breath and walked across the sunbeams to the door.

She slid open the lock.

It was dark in the corridor. Good; she just needed to sneak down a couple of staircases. Go out the back way--once she got to the first outcrop of woods, they'd never find her, for better or worse--"

"Cereza?"

Cereza looked to her right and dropped the scarf.

Jeanne was sitting against the wall, hugging her knees to her chest, and her voice sounded unlike anything Cereza had ever heard. She clumsily got to her feet, as if she'd been sitting like that for a while, and ran at Cereza.

Cereza knew how to punch, but blocking, that was something entirely different, and she tried to brace herself with full knowledge she would still get a face full of pain, because Jeanne was clearly playing the long game--

And she didn't believe it when the girl's arms wrapped around her to her back, and Jeanne's face was making the shoulder of her blouse wet.

Cereza was staring at a bandage on the girl's cheek for a while until it registered that they weren't fighting.

And Jeanne was trying to talk while crying-- _always_ a bad move, always always. She was asking about the scarf. She let go and opened it, before Cereza could stop her, and took one look at the contents and then looked up at Cereza in horror. And she very much did not like Cereza's plan, or her explanation of why she now needed to run away. Cereza still tried to make a run for it, as a panther cub, but Jeanne kept catching her. And eventually Cereza was just so tired she brushed her teeth and went back to her room, where the red lynx was lying on her pillow atop a sheet of parchment.

"What's this?" Cereza said crabbily, gesturing to it.

Seamlessly beastmorphing, Jeanne was leaning against her headboard a moment later, flapping the parchment for effect. "Well maybe you could sit down and take a look at it. You'd find out by observation and deduction."

"You can't just tell me?" Part of Cereza wished Jeanne had really lain in wait for her and knocked all her teeth out. She was half wishing Jeanne would do it right now, because right now it felt like she had bruised her own heart, and that hurt worse than anyone else hurting her ever had.

"No."

Cereza sat down at her little desk, and with a loud flapping, a red owl fluttered over clutching the parchment, which it deposited in her lap.

It was a pact, written in Jeanne's neat and showy handwriting, and quite verbose, with very officially formatted paragraphs. Cereza had to skim it, even though she knew she probably should read a document like this closely just in case she was signing up to be Jeanne's official leg-shaver for the rest of her life or something, but she was just too tired. A sentence at the bottom stuck out to her for some reason.

_The undersigned will never forget that she is a witch._

_B_

The door, against all of Cereza's predictions, eventually submitted to Jeanne's profanity and, its complicated lock disassembling before their eyes, creaked open.

"See?" Jeanne couldn't resist muttering, meeting Cereza's eyes, "I _told_ you I'm one of a kind."

"That's wonderful," Cereza said, "And that has nothing to do with why in the world you took me here."

"I told you!"

"What did you tell me--y _ou have to do this, it's a pact, you've been assigned, butterfly_ \--you weren't making sense. I thought you'd finally gone and lost it."

Jeanne was suddenly facing in the other direction, down the corridor they came from, and then turned, looking down past Cereza. For a few moments, they were both silent, Cereza impatiently so. After a minute, Jeanne seemed satisfied that they were the only two people batshit enough to be down here at this time of night, and responded in a strangely measured tone.

"We all did our pacts today. You have to do yours tonight, too."

"And what's this about butterflies?" Cereza said, annoyed, before another extremely strong push sent her stumbling over the threshold into the room, and she almost lost her glasses again.

" _Jeanne_! I _swear_! You're _never_ going to find a boyfriend, you'll _never_ get married, you'll be _lonely_ your whole _life_ and _die a miserable spinster_!"

Cereza was reciting this bleak prediction of her best friend's future while examining the room. It wasn't large, but wasn't a broom closet either. It seemed to produce its own light, but from where, she wasn't certain. The walls were the same as any walls in the basement, bare gray brick, but across from the door was a mirror taller than Cereza, with legs and some sort of decorations calling to mind the different phases of the moon across the top.

"I'll stay and lookout for anybody coming," Jeanne muttered from the door. "Make it quick."

"Make--precisely _what_ \--quick?" Cereza muttered back over her shoulder. She could see herself--her dissapointing, pimpled teenage self--in the mirror. She had a mirror in her room, and she was on no friendly terms with it; had they really traveled through that storm for this?

Suddenly, the mirror's surface began to ripple, like a pebble had been tossed into a calm lake. And then the thunder struck, and it must have struck the building, or near it, because it shook the floor, and Cereza wondered if that had been why, but it didn't make sense--

Cereza looked back at the door by reflex to check on Jeanne, but then a sound, a clearing of the throat made her look at the mirror again, and--

 _Jesus_.

"Augh!" Cereza had to jump back. Something--something not human--was in the mirror, looking at her. And as she watched, it rolled its eyes, shook its head, and snapped, "Are you done, kid? They didn't tell me I'd be on call for your clan this late."

"JEEEEAAAAAAAANE!"

"Rezzy, shut up!" came a whispered yell from the door. "You'll wake up the entire clan!"

The--whatever it was--in the mirror frowned. "It's nighttime where you are? You damned amateurs, it doesn't _have_ to be nighttime for the full moon to take effect. You could have done this while I was properly awake."

"She's not allowed to come to classes," Jeanne said offhandedly, without even looking at the mirror.

The creature stared. Then it came close to the mirror, so that the tall mirror was just a view of its huge eye.

"Excuse me? You aren't a witch?"

"Yes she is," Jeanne called back, annoyed, and this time she turned, to look at Cereza. "Hey Rezzy, can you stop acting like a damned goldfish already? I can't talk to _your assigned demoness, Madama Butterfly_ , for you all night."

"I'm--I'm Cereza,"  she stammered, sounding about five years old. "I--I'm a witch, I was born one. I'm just--I'm not allowed. My mum--my mum and dad--they broke a rule, and they had me. They--"

"They didn't let you go to school?" The creature pulled its face back now completely confused.

"No--my friend, Jeanne--she--she teaches me stuff, in secret--she--nobody knows about it, she's been making me study and--and we practice sparring where they won't hear us, but--"

The creature looked--well--completely the opposite of bored now. "I have never...not in my _thousands_ of years helping your cursed clan... _ever_ heard of something like this."

"Rezzy," Jeanne snapped, "I think I hear someone coming, wrap it up," and with that she disappeared into the corridor.

"Jeanne!"

"She's gone to create a diversion," Madama Butterfly said absently. "A little strange. _Powerful_ , though--almost foolhardy. She's going to throw a bottle she's been hiding into the staircase, to buy you some time."

 _How do you **know** that_? A wave of goosebumps ran over Cereza's skin. But then she heard the faint thin shattering of glass and a guard--one of the older witches, maybe Lelma or Xexu, by the voice--curse nearby.

"Oh, I see...now _this_ is interesting. The cardinal sin of wrath...wearing ambition like a mask...nothing at all like you. Yet she seems _dangerously_ taken with you, that girl. Pacted with Madama Styx...now _there_ 's some irony for you...so how _were_ you assigned to me, if you aren't actually a student in the Umbra witching academy?"

"I don't know!" Cereza said, glancing with worry at the door again. "I don't know how this works! She just said you were assigned to me. She woke me up, and said there wouldn't be anybody in the building so--"

There were quick footfalls and then Jeanne ran into the room, breathing like she'd run a mile. She glared at the infernal face in the mirror. "Are you _still_ talking?! Madama Styx took me about thirty seconds!"

"She _would_ ," Madama Butterfly said. "All right. I don't know how this happened, but put your hand up to the mirror. It might hurt a little."

Cereza took three steps forward perfectly aware that she would regret all of this, and still wondering where they went wrong enough to get here, and spared Jeanne a quick look as she lined her fingertips up with the metal.

But it wasn't metal.

It was fire, intense black fire, and it traveled up her arm and she screamed so loud that when, a second later, the fire hit her face, it felt like her scream had another voice in it too, one that echoed through places that weren't even real--not in this reality--they couldn't be--

Her very being, her very _blood_ was on fire, and then it was all over, and she was on the floor sobbing, and she could only see her own terrified face in the mirror when she looked up.

Jeanne.

Jeanne was gone.

"Je-J--" Cereza leapt to her feet and nearly hit the ceiling. Weird. But she couldn't spend time thinking about that now. "Jeanne!" She ran out, and nearly collided with the wall. If Jeanne had gotten in trouble with that witch because of taking her here--

Someone grabbed her back and pulled a hand in front of her mouth to prevent her from screaming and she panicked like a lightning strike had hit her chest until she heard Jeanne whispering in her ear.

"Let's get out of here."

Cereza shoved her off, but Jeanne grabbed her hand and bulleted up the stairs again, and in what seemed like moments, they were booking it across the field again, the lightning and thunder having tapered off, but the rain going diagonal with the wind.

"Jeanne what the _hell_ just happened? Why didn't they find us--I was screaming like--"

Jeanne let go of her hand as they slipped past the gate, and she locked it behind them with a deft little spell. Then she looked back at Cereza. "Look, old Lelma...she _needed_ a little shut-eye. She'll be fine in the morning. She might not remember much. But she'll be fine, _trust me_."

And then she walked past Cereza, who stared in shock after her.

 

 

 


End file.
